UC Berkeley’s flagship institute for social science research

Our purpose is captured in our name: we provide an organizational framework—a “matrix”—that supports cross-disciplinary research pursued by social scientists across the University of California, Berkeley campus and beyond.

New Directions

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Event Date: March 10th, 2026
12:00 PM to 1:30 PM PT

New Directions: Colonial Legacies, Post-Colonial Perspectives

Colonial legacies continue to shape political, social, and intellectual life. While colonialism is often treated as a historical period, its structures and logics persist in contemporary debates around race, territory, knowledge, and power. This panel — part of the Social Science Matrix New Directions series — will bring together UC Berkeley graduate students from anthropology, geography, and sociology to examine how colonial histories are reproduced, contested, and reimagined across different contexts.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published October 2, 2014

From Plantation to Corporation

A UC Berkeley historian explores how commonly used modern-day business practices evolved from methods used in the operation of brutal slave plantations.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published September 30, 2014

Behind the Beef Machine

The origins of the modern U.S. beef industry go farther back than most people realize, says UC Berkeley historian Joshua Specht.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published September 23, 2014

Population and Climate Change

A team of UC Berkeley researchers warn that unless action is taken, certain countries will likely face dire rates of starvation and disease.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published September 23, 2014

The Cuban Health Question

A book edited by UC Berkeley's Nancy Burke provides a comprehensive and critical look at the history, construction, and circulation of the Cuban healthcare system in a global context.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published September 17, 2014

Invisible Users

Invisible Users, a book by UC Berkeley's Jenna Burrell, explores the youth culture of Internet cafés in Ghana, which upends expectations about the power and purpose of technology.

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Research Highlights

Article

Published September 11, 2014

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies

Migrant farmworkers are subject to social and economic inequalities that put them at greater risk of hardship and injury, according to a book by UC Berkeley’s Seth Holmes.

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